I was playing golf out of town at the in-laws this past weekend and saw several small LMB cruising a pond off of one of the tee boxes. I had a rod and my fly tackle bag in my truck so I headed back out the next day during the late afternoon. I fished for about 45 minutes - an hour and had dozens of follows but only 4 or 5 hits and I only landed one. I felt like I was getting my fly where I needed but they weren't hitting it like I hoped. I threw a balsa popper painted green with an orange belly, a simple foam popper that was green with a yellow belly, and a version of Price's LMB fly that I tied in grey/white/tan. I also tried a dark grey bugger under a thing-a-ma-bobber. There was some pretty heavy grass a few feet under the surface so I didn't want to throw anything that got in to that.

Next trip up to see the in-laws, I'd like to go armed with some better LMB flies. All of the bass were pretty small, in the 1 lb range, but they'd make for a fun few hours.

For the heck of it, here is a crappy cell phone picture of the little guy that ate my ugly balsa popper:

First keep in mind that this is a family forum before you start throwing around four letter words like g**f. Just kidding.

Those cruiser bass can be a tough nut to crack. I've had very little success getting cruisers to eat anything. We had a discussion a while back about just what they WERE cruising for and no one really had a good answer.

I would tend to be more interested in the grass you mentioned. That heavy grass might have been hiding some heavy bass who were in the mood to eat. The awful truth about fishing with any kind of tackle for LMB is that you're going to lose flies/lures. Bass like cover and they'll dive back into it the first chance they get.

The way to go after those fish on their own turf is to find some flies that are as weedless as possible while still retaining their ability to catch fish. Flies that ride hook point up, like Clouser Minnows, are good candidates, as are flies with weedguards.

I've always heard that g**f course fishing is great fishing due to the abundance of nutrients available to feed the forage fish that feed the bass. I'll bet we can help you do better than that cute little fella that ate the popper.

I hit a small golf course pond near my house the last week and it was great! Not huge bass by any means but good size and nice fights. My advice on golf course bass would be Clousers in chartreuse and white, and tie them with a weed guard (40-50lb. test mono). My next and very important piece of advice would be to cast to a likely spot from every angle and side of the pond possible. i.e.- there was a deep pocket where I knew there would be a bass, but nothing hit after 10 casts, so I walked around to the other side of the pond, cast to the same spot, stripped, and bam! My guess would be the lawn chemicals make the bass a little . I also noticed that they like to follow it a long time and most of the hookups were very close to me.

Woops . I totally forgot this post thread was about sight fishing for bass! As for sight fishing I would still recommend throwing a clouser and swimming/stripping it away from them

Topper/dropper works good unless (like my Doctor friend mentioned) there is lots of grass then definitely something weedless.

Thanks for the info folks. I am going to be better armed next time I make it up there.